Project officer for USAF bid to renew lease of Nellis ranges from US congress

Retired July 1, 1997 – a little over 24 years of service

Major Awards & Decorations

USAF Commendation Medal

Defense Commendation Medal (for joint service)

USAF Meritorious Service Medal (w/three oak leaf clusters)

Defense Meritorious Service Medal (for joint service)

Notes

Family information: I married Donna in 1965, several years before joining the USAF. Our son Gregory was 8 or so when we joined the USAF. He graduated from high school in 1984 in Anchorage, Alaska. Our daughter Polly was born in 1975 while I was at Pilot Instructor Training at Randolph AFB, learning to be a primary jet instructor pilot for USAF student pilots. She graduated from high school in 1992 in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Donna went back to college while we were in Okinawa, Japan, taking courses from the overseas campus of the University of Maryland and earning her BA in business management.

When I joined the USAF and went to officer training school and then pilot training, we were still in Vietnam and I expected to see combat after graduation. As I started pilot training, however, the air war ended and flying assignments grew scarce. I was lucky: I was “plowed back” into Air Training Command as a T-37 instructor pilot. It turned out to be a grand assignment, and I wouldn’t have gone on to the F-15 three years later without it.

The F-15 was and is the ultimate air-to-air fighter, designed to sweep the skies of enemy aircraft – and so far it has a perfect record of doing so (100-plus kills and no losses). As you can see from the outline above, I’ve done a lot of things in the USAF besides flying the F-15 – I was a primary flight training instructor, a joint staff officer, a chief of flight safety, and a range maintenance officer.

Learning to fly the F-15 at Luke AFB in Phoenix was the most difficult and demanding thing I’ve ever done. Going from a simple training aircraft (the T-37) to the most sophisticated front-line fighter . . . a single-seat fighter at that . . . meant having to learn a lot of new things, and fast. Radar, electronic countermeasures, aerial refueling, weapons and all their various capabilities and limitations . . . it was like drinking from a fire hose! To make things even harder, I decided to quit smoking during F-15 training. I’m glad I did now, but at the time I really had my hands full.

It’s extremely rare for a pilot to stay in the cockpit throughout his career. Most of us have to pay our dues on non-flying staff tours, and I was no exception. I was luckier than most, because I was appointed to the joint staff, working with other services. Very few AF officers get this opportunity. At MacDill AFB in Tampa, I worked for two joint commands: USREDCOM and USSOCOM. US Readiness Command went away with the Goldwater-Nichols reforms of the mid-80s, and US Special Operations Command took its place. In both jobs I was in the J3 directorate – the operations directorate – and that’s where things happen. I traveled all over the world and briefed some fairly important people. I did so well in USSOCOM that an Army four-star general personally saw to it that the AF promoted me to lieutenant colonel.

There were a lot of high points in my flying career . . . it’s hard to identify anything that wasn’t a high point . . . but I’m especially proud of these moments:

Making four-ship flight lead and instructor pilot during my first fighter tour in Europe. The competition included some of the best fighter pilots in the Air Force, several of whom are general officers today, and it was the first time I realized I was becoming a good fighter pilot.

Planning the flight, then leading a four-ship of F-15s from The Netherlands to Eglin AFB in Florida, refueling six times as we crossed the Atlantic. Three days later picking up brand new F-15Cs at the McDonnell-Douglas factory in St Louis, then leading the flight back over the Atlantic to The Netherlands.

Being the unit F-15 functional check flight test pilot during two flying tours – I learned more about the airplane from those flights than any others.

Being the first F-15 pilot picked to go to Alaska to convert the unit there from F-4s to F-15s – I was the “hired gun” and had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to set a unit up right. It was hard, hard work but well worth it.

Intercepting Soviet reconnaissance and bomber aircraft in the Arctic. When we went to war in the Gulf in 1990 I was stationed in the Pacific theater, and no Pacific forces were allow to deploy to the Gulf (Korea was too dangerous at the time and we needed to keep our Pacific forces in place against that threat). So intercepting those Russian planes was the closest I’d ever come to combat!

Being mission commander for 40 or more fighters and attack aircraft during a Red Flag exercise in Nevada – and winning the “war” that day.

Flying in NATO in Europe when the cold war was at its hottest. Flying in Alaska, the most beautiful flying imaginable. Flying all over the Pacific. I actually don’t know much about flying in the States!

Leading ten F-15s home to Okinawa from a three-week deployment to Darwin, Australia, and having Donna and Polly meet me on the flight line after parking my jet.

Oh, it was all good times! And not just for me, but for all of us. It wasn’t just my military career, it was our military career, and It’s impossible to separate our military career from our personal, family life.

When I was growing up I always appreciated having lived in Europe, and both our children feel the same way.

Polly doesn’t remember her years in Holland all that well, but when she was there she went to a Dutch school and spoke the language perfectly. Camp New Amsterdam was an American enclave within a Dutch air base, and it is the only base I’ve ever been assigned to that didn’t have a military ghetto outside the main gate. When we were there, there was no base housing for officers and troops – we all lived in the Dutch community, here and there within a 25-mile radius of the air base. It was marvelous. While we were in Holland we took several family trips, to England, Scotland, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, and Italy. Those trips to Italy were the best – Donna has family in Vittorio Veneto, up in the mountains NW of Venice, and we got to know the Italian side pretty well. In one two-week trip to Vittorio Veneto, Polly started speaking Italian too!

I was the one who wanted the Alaska assignment, and I worked hard to get it. Donna and the kids weren’t so sure about Alaska – after three years in Europe they wanted to get back to the States, and Alaska didn’t really count as a state (by their reckoning, it’s not really a state if you can’t get in your car and drive to other states). But once we got our feet on the ground in Anchorage, we all fell in love with Alaska. I think if I found a job in Anchorage, Donna would willingly pack up and move there again. We had a ski slope with lifts and a lodge right there on base, and during our last winter season Donna and I rented a big condo down at the Alyeska ski resort on a time-share deal – we had it one Friday and Saturday each month – and on that weekend half the squadron, husbands and wives, would come down to stay with us and ski. We weren’t able to travel that much as a family because it was so expensive to get from Alaska to anywhere else, but Donna did manage to come with me to one of the Red Flag exercises in Las Vegas, and just before we were reassigned we flew to Hawaii.

Our time in Tampa was nice too – I don’t know if I could stand south Florida today, with the crowding and the high humidity – but we liked living there. We bought our first house in Tampa, so we didn’t travel as much as we used to, but we did make a few trips down to Key West, which we loved. I bought my first Harley in Tampa, and spent many a weekend riding from one coast to the other.

Donna will say her favorite location was Japan. She got more out of that tour than any of us, I think. She had many friends there, American and Okinawan, and she stayed busy the whole time. We didn’t think we’d travel very much, but when Polly’s swim team was invited to compete in a regional event in Hong Kong we found out that air travel in Asia was pretty cheap, and after that we started traveling, to Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, “mainland” Japan, and Korea. If we’d have stayed longer I’d have tried to drag Donna down to Australia (the AF sent me there, and it’s my favorite place in the world now – I finally took Donna down under, but not until 2000, after I’d retired).

My favorite tour was Hawaii. Donna, after Japan, was once again ready to go home to the REAL States, so she was a little restive in the islands. But I had a wonderful time and have nothing but good memories. I’d go back in a heartbeat – if anyone were willing to pay me enough so that I could afford to live there!

We went to Nellis AFB in Las Vegas to wrap things up and get on with our post-AF lives. We knew there were good opportunities in the area, so we bought a house in town – it was the house we should have kept, and we wish we had. Anyway, after I retired I had two good offers, neither one in Las Vegas, and we wound up in Tucson, which (as has pretty much everything in our lives) turned out to be a wonderful place, and we hope to stay here for the rest of our lives.